10/16/07
Army Times -- - "NEW
YORK — The American Civil Liberties Union said
Sunday that newly uncovered documents show that
the Pentagon secretly sent hundreds of letters
seeking the financial records of private
citizens without court approval.

The ACLU said an
analysis of 455 so-called national security
letters issued after Sept. 11, 2001 shows that
the Pentagon collaborated with the FBI to
circumvent the law and may have overstepped its
legal authority to obtain financial and credit
records. The ACLU has been reviewing the letters
and the accompanying documentation over the past
few days.

“Once again, the
Bush administration’s unchecked authority has
led to abuse and civil liberties violations,”
said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero
in a statement. “The documents make clear that
the Department of Defense may have secretly and
illegally conducted surveillance beyond the
powers it was granted by Congress.”

No spokesman for
the Pentagon was available for comment Sunday.

The New York
Times first disclosed the military’s use of the
letters in January, and members of Congress and
civil liberties groups said the practice
conflicted with traditional Pentagon rules
against domestic law-enforcement operations.

Vice President
Dick Cheney defended the practice as a
“perfectly legitimate activity” used to
investigate possible acts of terrorism and
espionage.

The documents
relating to the letters were obtained through
the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU and
the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Times
reported Sunday that the documents show that the
Pentagon’s own review of the program found
systemic problems and poor coordination.

According to the
Times, the documents suggest that military
officials used the FBI to collect records for
what started as purely military investigations.

The Times said
military officials defended the letters, which
they said had been used to gather information
about military personnel and contractors.

Maj. Patrick
Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Times that
investigators could use the letters, for
example, to examine the assets of a military
contractor who seemed to have sudden and
unexplained wealth.

But the Times
said internal memos issued by Defense Department
agencies seemed in some cases to encourage the
gathering of records on nonmilitary personnel.

Recipients of
national security letters, including Internet
service providers, financial institutions and
credit reporting agencies, are generally
forbidden to disclose that they have received
the letters.

The ACLU filed
Freedom of Information Act requests with both
the Defense Department and the CIA in April
seeking all documents related to their use of
the letters to gain access to personal records
of people in the United States. And in June, the
ACLU filed a lawsuit to force those agencies to
turn over the documents.

“The expanded
role of the military in domestic intelligence
gathering is troubling,” Melissa Goodman, staff
attorney with the ACLU’s National Security
Project, told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“These documents reveal that the military is
gaining access to records here in the U.S. in
secret and without any meaningful oversight.
There are real concerns about the use of this
intrusive surveillance power.”

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